Some 20+ years ago, I left the engineering and project management stuff after building BBS FM Radio and BBS TV. I must say I was a bit fed up with meetings and negotiations and fundraising, or dining with donors and contractors, and preparing GANTT charts and spreadsheets, although my organization (BBS) was benefiting.

I moved to documentary filmmaking and journalism. As a producer and filmmaker, I did some watchable documentaries and anchored my own talk shows on BBS TV. I introduced the talk-show culture on Bhutanese television. Before me, no one wanted to talk on the public media.

I also went on to collect a few prestigious international awards here and there before I was inducted as palace staff in 2009 to lead the communication and public relations. Glory days, indeed. Greatest honor.

After I was relieved from that role in 2013, I became an adjunct professor and also went back to school to study for another higher degree—in communication and social science this time, which included a heavy dose of cultural studies and Buddhism.

In 2022, I left my jet-setting life in Macau and the classrooms behind. I thought I was done with everything I had to do—made my fame and fortune, achieved what I had to achieve, and tasted both fun and failures. I retreated back to Bhutan to a quieter life of mantras and building some stupas and temples. Everyone was leaving. I chose to return.

One year back I was accidentally made the chairperson of an ambitious spiritual project in GMC—one of the 14 that received the Royal Decree.

To cut it short, I am now back to meetings and negotiations and fundraising and dining with donors and contractors and preparing GANTT charts and spreadsheets. And on the move again.

There is a line from the movie Kung Fu Panda that best describes my story.

“You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.”

In Buddhism, time is believed to be cyclical and not linear. It indeed seems to be that way. It is back to the future.